Goldman Sachs launches AI-powered social media startup Louisa

Goldman Sachs, better known as a Wall Street banker than technology, just spun out its first startup from its incubator.

The company, an employee networking platform called Louisa, was funded and owned by a New York-based investment bank until a few weeks ago, according to founder and CEO Rohan Docter. but later became independent.

Now Dr. is working hard to expand its customer base beyond Goldman, where Goldman employees have been using Louisa for the past two and a half years. The software automatically creates user profiles from employer databases, pulls in news feeds, and actively connects people who could benefit from getting to know each other, he said.

“Think of Luisa as AI-enhanced LinkedIn,” the 42-year-old Doc said in an interview this week. “We have a smart profile and a smart network, and Luisa is reading millions of articles every week from 250 providers and starting to connect people,” he said of the deal possibilities gleaned from the news. said to be based on

Under CEO David Solomon, Goldman has sought to accelerate its digital transformation by hiring executives from Google and Amazon and asking employees to pitch their startup ideas to leaders. Luisa was part of the inaugural class of Goldman’s incubator his program that encourages employees with startup ideas to develop them in-house.

Doc, who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs and also served as head of banking solutions in Hong Kong and London, came up with the idea for Luisa after closing a major deal in 2018.

The euphoria of securing a deal, a complex risk transfer between banks and insurers worth tens of millions of dollars, was followed by nagging questions. “How did the Doctor do it, and is it reproducible?”

“The real answer was chance, chance,” he says. “I was lucky that another man and I were thirsty at the same time. [bar] Go to London and start exchanging information. ”

There must be a better way, he thought. Professional services companies like Goldman rely on the expertise and connections of their employees, but there is a limit to how many colleagues anyone knows.

“Companies are losing billions of dollars in lost opportunities, disconnected colleagues and disrupted client experiences,” he said.

So he moved from Hong Kong to New York and started hiring programmers for his early efforts.

The company was originally named after Louisa Goldman Sachs, the youngest daughter of Marcus Goldman and wife of Samuel Sachs. But given how the Doctor has had to deal with Goldman’s competitors, the startup’s name now more commonly refers to the “famous warrior,” he said.

Goldman said Luisa has more than 20,000 monthly active users, but declined to say how much it spent to get the company up and running.

In addition to Goldman, Doc has begun signing clients including commercial banks and venture capital funds with nearly $100 billion in assets, he said. He said the company will initially focus on a small subset of five to six professional services customers before expanding its efforts.

He believes two factors make his startup particularly timely.

The emergence of generative AI techniques like OpenAI’s ChatGPT has created excitement in a calm environment for tech companies, he said.

“It’s just amazing what OpenAI has done,” he said. “With it, you can map out in seconds what’s on people’s minds and how they want to express themselves.”

Additionally, remote and hybrid work has disrupted how employees interact, creating a need for networking platforms like Louisa, Doctor said.

“If you had a question, it used to be common to lean over the crowded trading floor and ask around,” he said. “Hybrids have taken root where they don’t want it, and asking around no longer helps.”